Behind the Characters: Geordie Vollner
Good morning Readers! In a previous blog post, I had mentioned the inception of Fallen Ribbon came about from listening to the album Until There’s Nothing Left of Us by Kill Hannah. Well, today I am going to dive into what really inspired specifically Geordie’s initial concepts as a character.
When I was listening to that album on repeat, there was a song that really stuck out to me, Crazy Angel that reminded me at the time of the show The Vampire Diaries. I think by this point, I was a freshman in high school and the original vampire siblings, Elijah and Niklaus Mikaelson had already been introduced so we were already aware of the idea of a vampire werewolf hybrid. So then, I thought to myself, if the movie Underworld and shows like The Vampire Diaries can do concepts like vampire werewolf hybrids, why can’t I do an angel vampire hybrid. I couldn’t recall at the time stories where there was a vampire mixed with an angel and it made me really want to do it.
That was how I first thought of Geordie, through that one song. Repeatedly listening to that whole album, I loved the fast-paced rhythm of it and how it gave me thematic hints of strength, unity, love, and various other emotions that really get a person charged up, especially the song, Believer. That one gives me chills to this day and when I think about its lyrics, I picture in my mind, someone going out on an adventure with someone who cares deeply about them and believes in them. These were all the things that I wanted to get from Geordie.
I wanted her to be the kind of character that inspires others to want to work with her and to help her. She was meant to have the potential to be a strong independent creature, but she needs to start with less and not knowing that she has the potential to be more. She needed someone to believe in her and I created Matt to be that person for her so that eventually others would fall in line as well. Once I had that concept down in my mind, it was on to her looks.
As an angelic vampire, Geordie would inherently be gorgeous to begin with. That was a given. But I wanted her to be intoxicating to Matt as far as attractiveness level was concerned. The song, Lips Like Morphine, was the exact reaction that I wanted Matt to have out of meeting Geordie for the first time, as if he had been waiting his entire life for her to appear. He can’t explain why he feels so strongly about her immediately, but he knows in his gut that she was meant to be there and that’s what I wanted the basis of their relationship to look like. But because she is this greater being of power, unaware of the beauty she beholds, she doesn’t understand why someone would have this kind of reaction to her as no one else has her entire life. The kind of feelings I wanted Matt to have for Geordie were the message I got from the song, Lips Like Morphine by Kill Hannah.
The majority of the songs off that album pretty much sum up how Matt views Geordie as a person. Her core concept came from the viewpoint of how someone else sees her and then I threw in a few dashes of “tragic past”, “personal trauma”, and some other stuff to give her a little bit of substance outside of how her human companion views her. Further development of who she is as a person and how she views the world came much later, but those inspirations are what really got me started Geordie as a character.
If you enjoyed discovering how my brain associates music with my writing, or vice versa, you can look forward to the next Behind the Character post for Matt on August 1st. Don’t forget to buy your copy of Fallen Ribbon exclusively on Amazon, August 15th!
